Army Corps denies crucial DAPL easementhttps://www.hcn.org/articles/from-north-dakota-reactions-to-the-army-corps-dapl-denial
Protesters react to the decision to halt construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.On Dec. 4, the Army Corps of Engineers denied a permit for the construction of a key section of the Dakota Access Pipeline. The decision halts the construction on the 1,172-mile oil pipeline outside of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, where thousands of protesters are gathered. The decision, just a day before the evacuation deadline that ordered protesters to leave the encampment, is an apparent victory for tribes and environmentalists, who argued the pipeline would threaten water supplies and damage sacred sites.

In a statement, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell called the decision a “thoughtful approach (that) ensures that there will be an in-depth evaluation of alternative routes for the pipeline and a closer look at potential impacts.” The announcement underscores the importance of tribal rights reserved in treaties and federal law, she said, “as well as Nation-to-Nation consultation with tribal leaders.”

Celebrations erupted at the Oceti Sakowin protestors camp after tribal leaders announced the news Sunday afternoon. Leaders said that the Army Corps would look for alternative reroutes for the pipeline after environmental review.

“It really hits home for us,” said Vincent Fox, 25, who was at the camp when the news broke. He and his wife, Amy Jackson, had driven in from their home in Fort Yates, North Dakota, on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, to support the protest. As the couple pulled into camp, someone came to their car window to tell them about the Army Corp’s decision.

Despite the celebratory mood at camp, some protesters were apprehensive about the announcement. “I think it’s just a delay, since all the vets showed up,” said Jason Newberg, the Iowa leader of a contingent of thousands of veterans nationwide who arrived to North Dakota in recent days to support the protesters. “It’s a tactic to slow us down.”

Tay Wiles is an associate editor for High Country News. She can be reached at taywiles@hcn.org.

Note: This story has been updated with information to reflect the Army Corps of Engineers’ statement, including the decision to deny an easement, pending an analysis and Environmental Impact Statement.

I like to describe the feel of the place as apocalyptic. But the truth is Los Angeles has a way of functioning despite the odds. I often think about this when I rush out of my apartment each morning and join the flow of cars on the freeway: I can always count on city workers picking up the trash and fixing roads, around the clock. Families, including mine, seem to manage their busy schedules and still spend time together. We endure long hours inside our cars, stuck in traffic, yet we rationalize this mindless activity day in and day out.

Los Angeles is also one of the most diverse cities in America, a hotbed of cultural cross-pollination — the kind of place where we refused to believe that Donald Trump was real.

Pedestrians, and signs in Spanish and English, are reflected in a Lincoln Heights storefront window. Although Latinos are the majority here and the Spanish language predominantes, Cantonese, Vietnamese and English can also be heard along Broadway Avenue.

Roberto (Bear) Guerra

My neighbors are a couple of middle-class Asian and Latino families, an African-American couple, retirees. When we run into each other, we say hello, that’s about it. But in the past few months, as this election’s rhetoric heated up and our mailboxes filled up with angry campaign mailers, I felt an urge to get to know them. As a middle class, college-educated, immigrant woman living in the urban West, I’d wonder if they were in my camp, the kind of Angelenos I’ve come to expect in this huge global city: politically liberal, tolerant, willing to embrace multiculturalism.

Then, one day this fall, I noticed a Trump sign in the window of an apartment a couple of blocks away, along with more than a few “Make America Great Again!” bumper stickers on cars parked in the neighborhood. Still, I refused to accept the possibility of a Trump win. I was confident that the rest of the West — and a majority of voters — shared my logic, that we’d elect the most decent candidate, someone who did not espouse the racist myth that America’s greatness is in its past.

Call me naive. Now we’re all living in a Trump America. Today, there’s a palpable sense of despair coursing through the city, especially among immigrants, people of color, Muslims, Sikhs, Jews. For me, there’s more than despair. There is real fear.

Three days after the election, I boarded a flight from Denver to Los Angeles. From the back of the plane, I watched a Salvadoran family — mom, dad and three young daughters under the age of 10 — as they tried to find seats that would allow them to stick together. The mom spoke to her oldest daughter in Spanish, telling her to make her way to her seat, alone. Then, in English, she asked fellow passengers if they wouldn’t mind switching, so that she could be with her other kids.

Stuck between two men occupying the aisle and window seats, I could hear my neighbors exchanging complaints about the Salvadoran woman: “Does she not know how to read her seat assignments?” “Speak English, you’re in America.”

Three days is all it took to embolden bigots everywhere, I thought. Before the election, I would have felt the impulse to shame these men in public. This time, I opted for quiet civility, telling myself I’d speak up if it continued. I closed my eyes. I picked up my novel and read. I put on headphones for a while. A couple of hours later, as we began our descent, I met the gaze of the young white male next to me. He wore a white T-shirt and jeans; a dragon tattoo wrapped around his left arm.

“Do you live here?” he asked. His name was Chris and he was 24, from a military family in Colorado Springs. We quickly moved on from small talk and got straight to the topic of the election. “I didn’t vote, but my candidate won,” he said, almost in disbelief.

Chris couldn’t articulate why he supported Trump, beyond the fact that, at home, everyone else seemed to. He looked like a tough guy, but when he spoke his demeanor was gentle. Like his father and his friends, he was afraid of terrorists and criminals crossing the border, and he believed Trump when he promised he would get rid of all of them.

I let him speak. For those of us who believe in tolerance, the challenge now is twofold: We must keep standing up for our principles, but, increasingly, we must also engage with the other side. This was to be his first time in Los Angeles, Chris went on, a place he hoped to move to some day. “I’ve always wanted to come check it out for myself,” he confessed, as the plane swept over the vastness of my city. “I imagine there is something here for everyone.”

]]>No publisherCommunitiesPeople & PlacesCitiesDonald TrumpElection2016CaliforniaLatinosColoradoCultureCorruptionEssaysImmigrationSocial JusticePolitics2016/12/12 02:00:00 GMT-6ArticleHCN’s Climate Desk partnershiphttps://www.hcn.org/issues/48.21/hcns-climate-desk-partnership
After an unusually warm, dry November, we finally got some snow on the Western Slope. Though only a light dusting has fallen in Paonia, Colorado, where our magazine is headquartered, the mountains around us are blanketed in white, so it’s finally beginning to look like winter here.

High Country News has been doing quite a bit of outreach to our readers, media partners and local networks. In mid-November, Managing Editor Brian Calvert gave the keynote address at a quarterly U.S. Forest Service meeting in nearby Basalt, Colorado, for the Aspen-Sopris Ranger District, local conservation groups and other stakeholders. He discussed Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and how it has changed the way the magazine covers Western issues.

Late last month, our philanthropy advisor, Alyssa Pinkerton, who recently relocated to Colorado’s Front Range, organized several meet-and-greets with readers and some of HCN’s contributors. There were three coffeehouse gatherings in Denver, Boulder and Fort Collins, where we got a lot of good story ideas and comments. If you couldn’t make it, don’t worry: We’ll take any feedback you want to give us, whether online, by email or snail mail.

We’re excited to announce that HCN stories will now go further than ever, thanks to our inclusion in a national collaborative effort called Climate Desk. Climate Desk allows media partners to share their climate change coverage, which lets us bring readers even more information on the issue, while helping explain to a national audience just how climate change is affecting the West. Other Climate Desk partners include The Atlantic, Mother Jones and Wired. We couldn’t do it without all the support we get from our readers, so this is a proud moment for us all.

Lastly, one clarification: In “A Weird and Perfect Wilderness” (HCN, 11/28/16), we stated that the borders of the Kalmiopsis Wilderness may shift. While that potential exists, it would not be due to a mineral withdrawal proposed by some advocacy groups. Although the mineral withdrawal would not affect the extent of the wilderness, it would protect intact roadless land around its edges.

]]>No publisherDear FriendsNot on homepage2016/12/12 02:00:00 GMT-6ArticleIn the decision on Standing Rock, ghosts from the pasthttps://www.hcn.org/articles/in-the-decision-on-standing-rock-lessons-and-ghosts-from-the-past
The federal government’s decision on Dakota Access pipeline could signal a shift in U.S.-tribal relations.“People who remember history are destined to repeat it,” goes a bitter little joke in Michael Herr’s Vietnam War masterpiece, Dispatches. As events unfolded this fall at the confluence of the Cannonball and Missouri rivers, near the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, a nation that has tried to forget the atrocities it committed at Sand Creek, Wounded Knee, My Lai and the Washita seemed determined to repeat its own tragic history.

But on Sunday, as thousands of military veterans formed a human barrier, shielding the protesters, who call themselves “water protectors,” from the National Guard, the Army Corps of Engineers announced that the Dakota Access Pipeline would be denied an easement across treaty-protected Indian lands, pending further analysis and an Environmental Impact Statement. This decision not only gives the Standing Rock Sioux an enormous legal victory, it is a seismic shift in the sovereign-to-sovereign relations between the federal government and the Indian Nations of the United States. Without question, when the declaration was signed, the ghost of a Baptist lay minister named Samuel Worcester was looking over Obama’s shoulder.

For historical echoes of the Standing Rock legal crisis, 1831 provides the perfect tuning fork. In the spring of that year, Worcester and eight of his missionary colleagues were arrested for violating a new Georgia state law prohibiting white Christians from holding Bible study sessions with Cherokee Indians. Giddy Georgia legislators had passed a law forbidding such activities in order to challenge the central authority of the federal government. All nine Baptist missionaries were thrown into prison as punishment for their alleged crimes against the state of Georgia, setting the stage for a major legal battle that would pit states’ rights against federal law and tribal sovereignty. In fact, as Georgia would learn, and now North Dakota, a state lacks real authority in such matters.

The battle between the state of Georgia and Samuel Worcester, a Baptist law minister, helped solidify the notion of tribes' sovereign rights.

New Echota Historical Site

Georgia lawmakers in 1830 were making a stand against the treaty rights of all Indian nations, particularly the Cherokee — just like North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple did last week, when he issued an eviction notice to the encampment of the pipeline protesters. But Georgia Gov. William Gilpin soon realized that, in the case of the missionaries, zeal had trumped reason. This was not the test of “state's rights” he had been hoping for. To save face, he offered the missionaries clemency if they promised to stop the Bible study lessons. Similarly, Dalrymple realized zeal had once again trumped reason and began back-pedaling on his eviction notice. Dalrymple’s pronouncements proved immaterial; the protesters had no intention of moving.

In 1831, seven of the missionaries took Gilpin’s offer for clemency, but two, Worcester and Elizur Butler, declined. Like the protesters at Standing Rock, neither Worcester nor Butler had anything to gain by remaining in prison, but they stayed for another year and a half, on the principle that monumental constitutional issues, with far reaching implications for the Indian tribes, were at stake in this disagreement. In a letter that soars to the moral heights of Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Worcester posed questions to Gilpin that eventually would be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. The words of this exchange now echo across the Great Plains of North Dakota and help us understand the decision made by the Army Corps of Engineers.

“What are we to gain by the further prosecution of this case?” Worcester asked. “Our personal liberty? There is much more prospect of gaining it by yielding than by perseverance. And if not, it is not worthy of account in comparison with the interests of our country?

“Freedom from the stigma of being pardoned criminals? That also is a consideration of personal feeling not to be balanced against the public good.

“The arresting of the hand of oppression? It is already decided that such a course cannot arrest it.

“The prevention of the violation of the public faith? That faith is already violated, and perseverance has no tendency to restore it.

“The reputation of being firm and consistent men? Firmness degenerates into obstinacy if it continues when the prospect of good ceases; and the reputation of doing right is dearly purchased by doing wrong.”

Worcester demanded that these questions be heard by a high court. Similarly, the Standing Rock Sioux demanded that the federal government honor the solemn commitments it made to the tribe in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851, which established homelands for the seven Sioux nations and guarantees by Congress to protect those homelands and the resources from depredations by white settlers.

When it reached the Supreme Court, Worcester v. Georgia pitted the sovereignty of Indian nations against the jurisdictional presumptions of states (and any future entities, including, say, pipeline companies). In summary, Chief Justice John Marshall agreed with Worcester that the state of Georgia’s actions “were extensions of authority it never possessed in the first place,” and that “the acts of Georgia are repugnant to the Constitution, laws, and treaties of the United States.”

At Standing Rock, the acts of the state of North Dakota, the permitting process undertaken by the pipeline company, and the failure of government agencies to safeguard the rights of the Sioux people were similarly repugnant. As president of the United States, Obama could not allow, in the haunting words of Samuel Worcester, firmness to degenerate into obstinacy, or misguided efforts to do right be dearly purchased by doing wrong.

Paul VanDevelder, author of Savages and Scoundrels: The Untold Story of America’s Road to Empire through Indian Territory (Yale University Press) is a regular contributor to High Country News and Writers on the Range.

]]>No publisherOilNorth DakotaJusticeDakota Access PipelineOpinionTribesPeople & PlacesEnergy & IndustryPoliticsHistory2016/12/06 03:00:00 GMT-6ArticleWhat’s in a name? An Alaska town finds out.https://www.hcn.org/articles/whats-in-a-name-an-alaskan-town-finds-out
The city of Barrow sheds its conquest-era name for one from Iñupiaq culture: Utqiaġvik. Call it an “October surprise.” On Indigenous Peoples’ Day, the city of Barrow, Alaska, population 4,000, voted to change its name to Utqiaġvik (pronounced OOT-kay-AHG-vick). This was the community’s traditional name before its involuntary association with a 19th century Englishman.

Sixty percent of the residents of Utqiaġvik, which lies 320 miles above the Arctic Circle, are Iñupiat Eskimo. Sir John Barrow, a booster of Arctic voyages, never made the trip to Alaska himself, let alone to its northern extremity, but an admirer of his named Frederick Beechey tagged the area with Barrow’s name 191 years ago.

On Oct. 10, the town passed the name change by just six votes, 381–375. Qaiyaan Harcharek, the city council member who sponsored it, told Alaska Public Media that the tight margin reflected unease with change and fading memories of the early damage wrought by Western assimilation.

“Our people were severely punished for speaking our traditional language for many years, (but) a lot those folks that are around today don’t have that internal oppression where they’re afraid of that,” he said.

Whale bones abut the Chukchi Sea in the town formerly known as Barrow, Alaska.

Naql/Flickr user

Opponents cited the cost of changing signs and town stationary as well as the cultural loss of dropping “Barrow.” But others asked a different question: “What could be gained by calling the place ‘Utqiaġvik’?”

A recent high-profile decision in Alaska offers clues to that question. Last August, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell officially ordered that Mount McKinley, North America’s loftiest peak, be renamed Denali, the Dene name used locally for centuries. The writer John McPhee told the Native Alaskans’ side of the story in 1976:

“(They) are not much impressed that a young Princeton graduate on a prospecting adventure in the Susitna Valley in 1896 happened to learn, on his way out of the wilderness, that William McKinley had become the Republican nominee for President of the United States. In this haphazard way, the mountain got the name it would carry for at least the better part of a century, notwithstanding that it already had a name. … The Indians in their reverence had called it Denali.”

The howls of protest from McKinley’s native Ohio — House Republican Speaker John Boehner called it “deeply disappointing” — puzzled Alaskans, including Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who applauded the gesture of “honor, respect and gratitude” to the peoples of a locale President McKinley had even less to do with than Sir John Barrow. (A flier I saw in an office cheerily mocked the controversy by suggesting that Alaskans would concede the name of their mountain if the Ohio River were renamed for Sarah Palin.)

Some might roll their eyes at the apparent superficiality of names, whether they apply to a 20,000-foot rock pile or a tiny settlement on the continental fringe. Surely, there are more pressing issues for government to tackle.

But names are far from superficial. The christenings of Barrow and Mount McKinley were justified by an archaic doctrine of discovery that led to five centuries of Western conquest and colonization. They were the equivalent of campaign signs and sponsorship banners staked in someone else’s yard. Enshrined by history, names signal to generations to come which cultures and people are worthy of reverence.

Now, a Native American renaissance is underway, crystallized by the successful Standing Rock protest against a pipeline in North Dakota. The importance of this struggle may have been mysterious to many Americans because so few of us truly comprehend the rights, status and aspirations of what amounts to 1 percent of our nation’s population.

One symptom of this that I’ve noticed is a cynical approach to the social plagues of Alaska Natives. It’s the call for them to “own” their modern problems, the subtext of which is a call for absolving Western interlopers of their role in changing Native communities forever. I have no doubt that these are some of the same blithe souls who maintain that the city at the top of the world and the great mountain, respectively, will always be Barrow and McKinley to them. But what exactly is a name, if not a claim of ownership?

The ordinance shedding the city’s colonialist moniker is intended to help the Iñupiat reclaim their beautiful language. But like the earthen berms that try to shore up Utqiaġvik’s eroding coastline, it could very well prove to be a stopgap, a desperate last stand against the dovetailing losses of language and land. Yet it is a worthwhile, even a necessary step, now approved by the state’s lieutenant governor. It says, “We are the people who belong to this place. Whatever its past, we can still shape its future.”

Griffin Hagle is a contributor to Writers on the Range, the opinion service of High Country News. He is an energy manager and writes in Utqiaġvik, Alaska. The town’s name change took effect Dec. 1; however, a local Native corporation is challenging it in court.

]]>No publisherWriters on the RangeAlaskaOpinionTribesPeople & PlacesHistory2016/12/06 03:00:00 GMT-6ArticleLatest: Roadless rule loophole for Colorado coal minehttps://www.hcn.org/issues/48.21/latest-a-roadless-rule-loophole-was-reinstated-allowing-for-expansion-of-coal-mines-in-western-colorado
Enviromental groups had sued over the mine’s carbon impacts.BACKSTORYA loophole in the 2012 Colorado roadless rule, which protects undeveloped areas in the state’s national forests, allows coal mines to expand operations on 20,000 acres in western Colorado. Environmental groups sued to block expansion of the West Elk Mine near Paonia, Colorado, because the federal government refused to assess the social cost of the greenhouse gases that the mining would produce. A court ordered it to make that assessment and removed the coal mining exemption (“The campaign against coal,” HCN, 11/9/15).

FOLLOWUPIn November, the Forest Service proposed reinstating the exemption even though its analysis shows that mining the coal could create 433 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions and cost society billions of dollars. Robert Bonnie, undersecretary of Agriculture for natural resources and environment, justified the decision: “No one is under the belief that we’re going to immediately change the energy mix starting today. There’s going to be some level of coal for some time to come.”

]]>No publisherU.S. Forest ServiceCoalEnergy & IndustryClimate ChangeMiningLatest2016/12/12 02:00:00 GMT-6ArticleLatest: California’s tree die-off is bigger than you thoughthttps://www.hcn.org/issues/48.21/latest-the-tree-die-off-in-california-is-bigger-than-you-thought
An additional 36 million trees have died since May.BACKSTORYAs California’s historic drought entered its fifth year in early 2016, 66 million trees were declared dead, killed by bark beetles, disease and dehydration. Forest-management agencies plan to log over 6 million acres, citing increased wildfire risk. But many scientists say that hot, dry, windy weather, not dead trees, drives fire, and that dead trees provide vital wildlife habitat. The magnitude of the die-off has caused land managers to rethink forest-management strategies ("California plans to log its drought-killed trees,” HCN, 8/8/2016).

FOLLOWUPIn mid-November, a U.S. Forest Service aerial survey revealed that drought has killed an additional 36 million trees since May 2016, bringing the total to 102 million since 2010. Most have been in the central and southern Sierra Nevada, but increasing numbers are in Northern California. The state had a record-setting wildfire season this year, adding urgency to the debate over what to do about all the dead trees.

]]>No publisherLatestForestsCaliforniaU.S. Forest ServiceWildfireDroughtClimate Change2016/12/12 02:00:00 GMT-6ArticlePlans falter for West Coast coal terminals https://www.hcn.org/issues/48.21/plans-falter-for-west-coast-coal-terminals
Coal companies look to Asia, but face port challenges.Rev. Ken Chambers has lived in West Oakland for all of his 50 years and grappled with air pollution the entire time. The neighborhood, on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay, is surrounded by three major highways, an active railroad, and the fifth-busiest port in the country. Chambers’ four children showed symptoms of asthma, he says, a common condition among their neighbors. And although air quality has improved since then — thanks to new laws regulating emissions — the neighborhood’s mostly black, low-income residents still suffer from asthma rates up to three times higher than other parts of Oakland.

Last April, Chambers and his neighbors caught wind of a plan to redevelop the old Oakland Army Base, located along the waterfront in West Oakland, including a major new terminal for shipping coal to Asia. Proponents said that it would bolster the neighborhood’s struggling economy, and that coal exports were a necessary component, because they would provide revenue to operate the terminal. Critics, however, including Chambers, argued that fugitive coal dust blowing from trains headed for the port would further deteriorate West Oakland’s air quality, and that burning the coal overseas would exacerbate climate change.

And then, in late July, opponents scored a major victory when the Oakland City Council voted to ban shipments of coal from the city, citing the “false choice” between jobs and the environment — and halting the multimillion-dollar coal export proposal in its tracks.

The decision, which came after more than a year of feisty debate, placed Oakland at the center of a growing battle over the fate of the coal industry. Domestic demand for coal has collapsed in recent years, displaced by cheap natural gas, along with wind and solar power. As U.S. coal companies look to overseas markets for salvation, plans for the necessary West Coast export terminals have been blocked by local communities and environmental groups worried about climate change and human health and safety. Taken together, says Sierra Club attorney Jessica Loarie, the long-term market forces and growing public opposition “do not bode well for the coal industry.”

The former Oakland Army Base pier at the Port of Oakland in Oakland, California, where the plans for a bulk shipping terminal for coal and other commodities have stalled.

Eric Risberg/ The Associated Press

None of this bodes well, either, for places like Carbon County, Utah, which got its name from its vast seams of coal. This rugged landscape southeast of Salt Lake City was already heavily mined by the late 1880s. It entered Old West history in 1897, when legendary bank robber Butch Cassidy and his partner, William Ellsworth “Elzy” Lay, stole the Pleasant Valley Coal Company’s $8,000 payroll. Later, nearly 400 miners died in two underground explosions, in 1900 and 1924.

Despite that early tumult, Carbon County grew to depend on coal. For most of the last century, coal supplied the vast majority of Utah’s energy needs and attracted the attention of other states as well. In the early 1980s, a Southern California electrical utility cooperative helped persuade the state to build a massive power plant, the Intermountain Power Project, in western Utah, promising to buy its coal-generated electricity.

But things changed as utilities increasingly switched to cheaper natural gas and renewables. In 2013, Los Angeles, which had a contract with IPP, voted to end its reliance on coal-fired electricity by 2025, in favor of natural gas. The decision stunned Carbon County, 75 to 80 percent of whose jobs depend on coal mining and power generation. Hundreds of locals have lost their jobs as coal-fired power plants have closed and mines have shuttered. “It put us into a tailspin,” says County Commissioner Jae Potter. “What do you do?”

That trend has rippled across the Interior West, from Colorado to Montana, amid plummeting U.S. demand for coal. After declaring bankruptcy, major firms like Arch Coal and Peabody Energy are downsizing — cutting jobs, closing unprofitable mines, and taking on less debt.

In the early days of coal’s decline, however, the industry still looked profitable to the private equity industry, which buys up troubled businesses, restructures them and sells them at a profit. Although the U.S. market was collapsing, Asia’s demand for coal appeared insatiable. Private equity firms, such as Salt Lake City-based Lighthouse Resources, bought mines in Montana and Wyoming and began pushing export projects in Washington and Oregon. And in 2013, Galena Asset Management invested over $104 million in Bowie Resources, a Kentucky-based coal company, to create Bowie Resource Partners. Backed by more than $800 million in private equity money, Bowie went on a spending spree, buying three Utah mines owned by Arch Coal. The company later bought three more mines — two in New Mexico and one in Colorado from Peabody Energy, another coal giant on the verge of bankruptcy. In a press release, Galena CEO Jeremy Weir heralded the Bowie partnership’s opportunity to “reshape the Western U.S. coal paradigm.”

In its financial documents, Bowie outlined plans to export its landlocked coal through West Coast ports. But it glossed over a major problem: The existing marine terminals in California and other West Coast states were too small to export the millions of tons of coal that its Utah mines could produce. A new larger terminal planned for West Oakland, however, could provide the opportunity Bowie needed.

When the marine terminal proposal for West Oakland first surfaced in 2013, coal was not mentioned. Instead, the developer said the terminal would ship bulk goods like iron ore, corn, wind turbines and auto parts. Chambers, like many of his neighbors, supported the project, which would help replace some of the 7,000 blue-collar jobs lost when Oakland Army Base closed in 1999.

Then, last April, a local Utah paper, the Richfield Reaper, broke a story that the developer had tried to keep under wraps: Four counties in Utah, where Bowie’s coal mines were located, intended to invest in the proposed Oakland terminal, with the intent of shipping their coal out of it.

The city’s vote against coal stalled the plan, and other blows soon followed, including new legislation banning state funding for bulk-coal terminals. In the signing letter, Gov. Jerry Brown highlighted California’s recent moves to replace coal with cleaner energy sources. “That’s a positive trend we need to build on,” he said, calling Oakland’s ban an important step that other localities — and the state — should follow.

By the end of August, things were looking even worse for the terminal: The four Utah counties where Bowie owns mines withdrew their application for the $53 million state loan to invest in the project, and Bowie canceled its IPO, citing poor market conditions.

In early November, construction began on the first phase of the Army base redevelopment, but whether or not the bulk terminal will still be part of the project remains uncertain. The developer, California Capital & Investment Group, and its terminal operator, Terminal Logistics Solutions, declined to be interviewed for this story.

One thing, however, is certain: The long-term economics of big export projects no longer appear as promising as they once did. Transporting coal by rail 1,500 miles from Utah to the West Coast is expensive, says Anna Zubets-Anderson, a senior analyst at Moody’s Investor Service. Add the cost of shipping it to Asia, and it’s tough for U.S. producers to compete with countries like India and Indonesia, which have much lower labor and transportation costs.

International coal prices have spiked recently, but Zubets-Anderson says the uptick is temporary, largely due to the Chinese government’s attempt to cut its own coal production and consumption. Heavy rain and flooding in other parts of Asia have also disrupted coal supplies. “When those issues are resolved, prices will go back down — likely by the middle of 2017.”

Elsewhere in the West, other export projects are facing a similar fate. Since 2007, the six coal terminal proposals slated for the Pacific Coast have dwindled to just one — the Millennium Bulk Terminal in Longview, Washington — after Lighthouse announced it was no longer supporting the Morrow Pacific Project in Oregon. In November, the project was terminated.

The proposed Millennium terminal in Washington is on similarly unsteady ground. After declaring bankruptcy last January, Arch Coal, a major investor in Millennium, sold its $57 million stake in the project, leaving Lighthouse as the sole backer. Meanwhile, hundreds of residents from across the Pacific Northwest testified against the project during the last round of public hearings in October, echoing the concerns expressed by other West Coast communities and Indigenous groups, such as Washington’s Cowlitz Tribe, who argue that coal export projects threaten cultural and economic resources like salmon, violating their treaty rights.

Other West Coast cities are also following Oakland’s lead. On Nov. 16, the Portland City Council voted 3-0 in favor of a resolution that would halt new fossil fuel infrastructure, such as export terminals, and expansions to existing facilities. A final vote is scheduled for Dec. 8.

For the industry, this combination of grassroots resistance and political opposition is creating financial risks — like a “one-two punch,” says Clark Williams-Derry, an energy expert at the Sightline Institute, an environmental think tank. And the uncertainty makes big projects harder and harder to justify.

Even President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign pledge to revive the ailing U.S. coal industry and put miners back to work is unlikely to turn things around. Increasing anti-coal activism and cheaper natural gas are discouraging utilities from investing in coal, says Zubets-Anderson — not just in the U.S., but around the world. “I don’t foresee the new administration being able to change that,” she says.

Though Chambers applauded Oakland’s decision to ban coal exports, he feels badly for places like Carbon County that hitched themselves to a single commodity. “They’re struggling, too,” he says. West Oakland can empathize. Like Carbon County, it needs jobs — but not, Chambers believes, at the expense of human health.

]]>No publisherEnergy & IndustryCaliforniaClimate ChangeCoalCoastEconomyGrowth & SustainabilityMiningNorthwestOregonOilPeople & PlacesPoliticsPollutionPublic healthTransportationNot on homepage2016/12/12 02:00:00 GMT-6ArticleWhen Copper Kings leave, what happens to the slag?https://www.hcn.org/articles/the-montana-gap-when-the-copper-kings-leave-what-happens-to-the-slag
To jolt its economy, a town explores the many uses of the byproduct of its smelting history.This story is part of The Montana Gap project, produced in partnership with the Solutions Journalism Network.

It’s hard to imagine Anaconda without slag heaps. Driving into town, they’re the first thing visitors see. Large obsidian piles of fine, sand-like byproduct leftover from the days of the Copper Kings.

The stuff is everywhere. You can jump into a pit of slag at the Anaconda Smelter State Park, pick up a handful and let it run through your fingers like sand, except it’s coarser and sharper. You can buy Ziploc baggies of it at the Chamber of Commerce for two bucks each — cash only though. And at Old Works Golf Course, you can get your golf ball stuck in “slag traps.”

Anacondans share an odd fondness for the heaps.

Kaitlin Leary, who moved back to town recently, said that the heaps are always there to greet her and she would be sad to see them go. Last summer, local couple Zane and Haley Kenny inscribed their names on the slag using white planks, a message to the whole town that they were getting married soon. Gloria O’Rourke, who grew up in Anaconda, remembers watching ants dig up slag from her family’s yard when she was kid.

Historian Bode Morin, who has spent most of his career studying copper smelter towns, says when people think about heritage, usually they think about old houses and pleasant scenery. The slag heap offers something else. “It’s an important representation of what made these regions,” he says. “These waste piles are as historically significant to the process as the buildings that were there. They are part of this landscape.”

The slag pile is at once a hallmark of Anaconda’s proud working heritage and a symbol of the Superfund legacy which that history gifted the town. For some in Anaconda, slag is also an economic opportunity, a pathway to a revitalized city. So far, attempts to monetize it have failed to live up to the dreams — yet the dreamers keep coming.

On Sept. 29, 1980, a day that would come to be known as “Black Monday,” the Washoe copper smelter closed down for good. It was sudden: Just weeks before, Atlantic Richfield Company, the company that bought the smelting operation from Anaconda Copper Company, expressed optimism that it would be expanding operations.

The event caused a major disruption in the town. Over 1,000 people lost their jobs. In Deer Lodge County, of which Anaconda is county seat, the population has dropped 42 percent since 1970, and the number of jobs have dropped by 26.7 percent, according to data collected by Headwaters Economics.

In the decades since, Anaconda hasn’t found a way to reverse the trend. A 2016 Census survey estimates that there are 200 fewer people since 2010. The median age now is 46.8, well above the state average of 39.7 and the national average of 37.6. Deer Lodge County jobs pay an average wage of over $37,000, below the state average of nearly $44,000. That’s due in part to a transition to service jobs like those found at Albertson’s and Fairmont Hot Springs.

On top of this all, residents face an environmental catastrophe, too. In 1983, the Environmental Protection Agency designated the Anaconda area as a Superfund site, encompassing 300 square miles of property laden with arsenic and other toxic elements, the result of a century of copper smelting pollution.

Since the Washoe Copper Smelter closed down permanently in 1980, Deer Lodge County has seen a 42 percent drop in population. These days, the area’s population is older and makes less money than the state average.

James Drysdale

It’s in this setting that Anaconda has tried to start its economic engine, welcoming with open arms – and tax incentives – any entrepreneur promising jobs.

John Fitzpatrick, an “old war dog” of Montana’s Legislature, was in Anaconda during that time working on economic development initiatives, and he currently splits his time living in Helena and Deer Lodge County. He says the town is littered with stories of businesses coming to town with big promises and failed expectations. “Honest to god, every huckster and promoter in the western United States showed up in Anaconda [after the smelter shutdown] with the theme song, ‘We can do this we can do that.’” he says. “Every single one of them was a bust.”

People are equally susceptible to grand business ventures regarding Anaconda’s slag pile. It would be the perfect storybook ending if Anaconda could create an industry around the very thing that represents its economic downfall.

After all, there’s a lot of slag: The main pile covers 130 acres, with an estimated 16 million cubic yards weighing about 55 million tons. It also looks and acts like sand, a known commodity.

Anaconda Local Development Corporation Director Jim Davison says developing slag as a resource could help the economy on multiple fronts: It could provide jobs with decent wages, bring export activity to a railroad yard that is mostly used for maintenance and storage and it could bring a tax base to a property where no taxes are being paid.

The EPA is onboard with the idea. The 1998 record of decision for the Anaconda Superfund site concludes that slag will not be considered a waste so long as it’s being used as a resource. If five years go by without activity, the agency could force ARCO to start the process of capping the pile with limestone and clean soil, the go-to solution for waste in Anaconda.

EPA Remedial Project Manager Charlie Coleman, who has worked at the Anaconda site since the 1980s, says reusing the slag would have an added bonus beyond “just sticking it in a hole.” Not only would reuse provide an economic boost for locals, but it would also leave less waste behind to eventually cover up.

The problem is, slag isn’t sand. It’s made up of mostly iron and silica (comprising about 72 percent of the slag), as well as harmful metals such as arsenic and lead. While the latter two make up just .35 percent of the slag, there’s enough slag that the lead and silica alone total nearly 200,000 tons – enough to fill almost 2,000 ore trucks stretching about 20 miles from Anaconda to the outskirts of Butte, Fitzpatrick told the local Rotary Club in a presentation in January.

Concerns over slag’s health hazards first arose in the 1980s, when the Department of Transportation started using it to sand icy roads. Parents were afraid of their children eating snow and ingesting slag along with it. Residents living by Georgetown Lake worried about harmful metals leaching into their otherwise pristine waters.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took on the problem. The test was simple. Scientists placed slag samples into four flasks filled with water, swirled it, let it sit for an hour and recorded the contents and pH. Then they let the samples sit in the water for a week, swirling daily. The evidence seemed conclusive: the pH changed, if only slightly, and trace amounts of metals could be found in the water.

Furthermore, the CDC concluded that the grounding up of slag on the roads from traffic could produce smaller particles that could be breathed into the lungs, where its sharp, jagged edges can be “very irritating “and “rupture tissue.”

Not long after the CDC’s remarks, state legislators banned the use of slag on roads. George Ochenski, the environmental lobbyist who lead the campaign against using slag (now a columnist for TheMissoulian), wrote in an email that “spreading industrial wastes into formerly clean environments is the height of idiocy.”

After more testing, the EPA declared slag inert in most situations, meaning the toxic elements won’t leach out a significant amount, and allowed continued use of it as a product under Superfund status, so long as uses meet government regulations. Still, Coleman says that the EPA won’t approve uses for slag near water and will typically shy away from uses that would place people in regular contact with the material. “We didn’t want to take that risk,” he says.

Ochenski isn’t convinced that’s enough. He argues that by calling it inert and allowing its use as a resource, EPA absolved itself — and ARCO — of having to clean up a big mess. “It’s left in place as a great toxic welcome mat to Anaconda,” Ochenski wrote.

The slag pile in Anaconda is a byproduct from the town’s copper smelting history, and is part of the town’s Superfund site. For over a half-century, companies have tried but often failed to find value in the material.

James Drysdale

Even so, companies have long tried to find uses for the slag in Anaconda, either to extract metal from it or to use it as a product. Several prospects never materialized, including ones from well moneyed sources such as the Anaconda Copper Company and prominent New York real estate developer William Zeckendorf. It wasn’t until 1982, when Dominic DiFrancisco and his family built a facility to process and sell slag, that some success was found. The company, called RDM Enterprises, turned slag into a multi-million-dollar business that lasted for 30 years and got the “Governor’s Award for Excellence in Exporting.” At its height it employed up to 20 people.

But the business went off the rails in the early 2000s after its contract with ARCO expired. ARCO didn’t renew it, and the DiFranciscos responded with a lawsuit they wouldn’t win. Part of the problem was EPA’s 1998 record of decision: with guidelines for Anaconda’s Superfund status finalized, ARCO was concerned about the implications of using slag.

“Clearly, if somebody is going to be marketing that material, we have to be very careful about how we divide the liability,” Sandy Stash, ARCO’s vice president for environmental affairs at the time, told the Montana Standard.

For nearly a decade after the DiFranciscos pulled out, companies would check on the prospect of using slag, but would eventually move on. (Davison likes to tell the story of how he shipped a barrel of slag to interested parties in Sweden.) It wasn’t until 2011 that a more serious offer arrived from U.S. Minerals, a slag products company based out of Illinois handpicked by a consulting company working with ARCO.

On the outside, U.S. Minerals seemed like a perfect match for the site. The company has plenty of experience working with slag and has seven locations similar to Anaconda, selling the product for uses in the abrasives and roofing tile industries.

The results have been lackluster. While CEO David Johnston wouldn’t share financial details, or even how much slag the company has shipped off, he offered that business has been “less than we would like it to be.” Right now, the company only employs five workers.

Simply put, he says, the company is a long way from its customers. The majority of product goes to customers out of state, in Missouri or out to the West Coast — a market they would like to grow.

U.S. Minerals has also struggled with the side effects of all slag’s lesser, nastier components. In March of 2015, Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined the company $107,000 for 16 “serious violations,” including exposing workers to five times the permissible amount of arsenic and not having required respiratory gear. Johnston says that U.S. Minerals has not put workers in harm’s way and that the company is still working with OSHA to see if the fine can be reduced or waived. If an agreement can’t be reached, he says the company is willing to sue OSHA.

Johnston still believes there’s potential for U.S. Minerals to expand, but he’s frank in saying that it would take a long time to work through the slag pile. “I would say my children, my grandchildren, my great grandchildren, are still going to be able to see that pile,” he says. “Hopefully not as high as it is today, but there are many years’ worth of material.”

With approval from the Environmental Protection Agency, companies can mine and sell the slag, which looks and acts like sand, except with a host of toxic contaminants encased inside.

James Drysdale

The struggles of U.S Minerals and DiFranceso’s failure haven’t stopped people hoping to get rich from seeing money in the slag hills of Anaconda. The most ambitious project yet — and perhaps the project with the most questions — is currently making its way through the permitting process. Premier Industries proposes to extract pig iron from the slag and turn the rest into a proppant, a material that is blasted into the ground during the fracking process to keep fractures open. Between the two processes, says business partner and metallurgist Dan Tabish, there will be no leftovers. Premier has the only facility that he can think of which produces no waste.

Rick Tabish, the primary contractor for the project (and cousin of Dan Tabish), claims that the project will bring in 700 jobs, gross $1 billion in sales and pay out $200 to 225 million in taxes. All of this, Tabish says, and the process is environmentally friendly. The idea has already been approved by the EPA and it is scheduled to fire up operations in the first quarter of 2018.

But Fitzpatrick, a self-described industrialist, is the project’s foremost critic. He supports the reuse of slag and the jobs it could bring, but he’s wary that the project is too good to be true. He questions Rick Tabish’s claims regarding job creation and taxes, why the company hasn’t gotten its air quality permit yet and how the process can produce no waste whatsoever. “This is the only industrial process in the history of Anaconda that has no waste stream,” he says. “That’s a little hard to fathom.”

He also wonders if Premier will find a market for its proppant at its price point. Rick Tabish told residents in November that the company could sell the proppant for $300 per ton, much more expensive than typical proppants. He says the company will have to prove its quality to customers.

For his part, Dan Tabish says the product will be high quality and should fetch higher prices. Through the pilot project, Premier has been able to produce “extremely excellent roundness and sphericity,” important elements for proppants.

Despite Fitzpatrick’s concerns, county commissioners have given the project their blessing, in the form of preliminary permits, heralding it as an economic boon. Meanwhile, many Anacondans, both former and current, say they support the idea behind the project, but aren’t holding their breath.

Patrick Duganz, 33, grew up in Anaconda but now lives in Bozeman. He thinks it would be great if companies can find success at the slag pile and provide people with good wages. But he’s seen companies come in promising big things before. “I’ll believe it when it comes to pass.”

Zachariah Bryan is a freelance reporter and student in the University of Montana’s graduate program in environmental science and natural resource journalism. Previously, he worked the community and business beats for newspapers in Washington and Alaska.

Note: This story has been updated.

]]>No publisherThe Montana GapPollutionU.S. Environmental Protection AgencyMontana2018/01/18 12:55:00 GMT-6ArticleThe BLM's inconsistent approach toward rule breakershttps://www.hcn.org/articles/the-people-v-the-blm-bundy-hammonds-malheur
A look at how the feds have — and have not — punished individuals for defying regulations.One of the reasons Ammon and Ryan Bundy and their armed friends are holed up at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, deep in the frigid sage plains of Oregon, is to protest what they see as an unjust punishment of a father-son pair of local ranchers, Dwight and Steven Hammond.

In October, a judge ordered each of the Hammonds to finish a five year required minimum sentence for lighting fires on public land back in 2001 and 2006. Critics say that’s far too harsh. And, indeed, it is a much greater punishment than the Bundys’ father, Cliven, has so far received for grazing his cattle illegally and without paying fees on a Bureau of Land Management allotment for decades. In fact, Bundy has yet to be punished at all, either for that or for his role in inciting supporters to threaten federal agents at gunpoint back in May of 2014.

Former federal officials blame the Bureau of Land Management's inaction in the Bundy case for the debacle that’s unfolding in Oregon today. “At the end of the day, most people have a common respect for the law, and with Mr. Bundy, he just believes differently, that he’s above the law,” Bob Abbey, former director of the BLM, told High Country News recently. “The fact that their trespass hasn’t been dealt with in a timely matter reinforced beliefs.”

HCN took a look at a handful of similar cases involving BLM land, and at the punishment for whatever transgressions might have occurred in order to see how consistent, or otherwise, the agency has been.

Tim DeChristopher

The Crime: In an act of civil disobedience, the 27-year-old DeChristopher bid $1.8 million in 2008 for Bureau of Land Management oil and gas leases, without intending to pay for them, in an effort to block the sale to drillers. He was charged with violations of the Federal On-Shore Oil and Gas Leasing Reform Act and of making false statements.

The Sentence: He was given two years in jail and three years of probation and ordered to pay a $10,000 fine.

Tim DeChristopher speaks at a press conference when more than 400 organizations and leaders delivered a historic letter to the White House on asking President Obama to stop new federal fossil fuel leasing on public lands and oceans in the United States.

Suchat Pederson

Phil Lyman and Monte Wells

The Crime: San Juan County, Utah, Commissioner Lyman organized and participated in an ATV ride on BLM land closed to motorized vehicles in Recapture Canyon in order to protest the “jurisdictional creep of the federal government.” Lyman and Wells, a local blogger who publicized Lyman's calls for the protest and participated in the ride, were each charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, and for violating federal regulations by riding past the closure.

The Verdict: Lyman and Wells were found guilty of both federal misdemeanor counts.

The Punishment: Lyman was sentenced to 10 days in jail and three years of probation and fined $1,000. Wells got 5 days in jail and three months of probation along with a $500 fine. The two must together pay a total of $96,000 in restitution for damage done to resources during the ride. Ironically, the damage occurred on a portion of trail on which Lyman didn’t even ride. It was Ryan Bundy, in fact, who led a renegade group of protesters onto the more sensitive area, against Lyman’s wishes.

People drive off-road vehicles on public lands closed to motorized vehicles during the Recapture Canyon protest.

Jonathan Thompson

Carrie and Mary Dann

The Crime: Beginning in 1973, the two Western Shoshone elders grazed their cattle on federal land, refusing to pay grazing fees because they said the land was never legally ceded to the feds. In 1974, the BLM charged them with unauthorized livestock grazing and for making improvements on public land.

The Verdict: The Dann case wended its way through the courts throughout the 1970s and ’80s, and focused on whether the federal government had properly paid the tribes for the land in question. The Supreme Court ultimately decided that there had been a legal transfer of land to the feds. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, on the other hand, ruled in favor of the Danns. Still, in 1998, an administrative judge shot down the Danns’ appeal.

The Punishment: In 1992, the BLM rounded up 250 of the Danns’ horses, and, after a standoff, arrested their brother, Clifford, after he tried to set himself on fire. In 1998, the BLM ordered the Danns to pay $354,916; the Danns themselves said that overdue grazing fees added up to far more than that. After they refused to pay, the BLM rounded up more than 500 head of the Danns’ cattle and horses and auctioned them off.

Carrie, left, and Mary Dann on their ranch near Crescent Valley, Nevada, in 2002.

AP Photo/Laura Rauch

Steven Dwight Hammond and Dwight Lincoln Hammond, Jr.

The Crime: The two were charged and indicted (pdf) by a grand jury on nine counts, including conspiracy, arson, creating risk of injury and tampering with a witness in connection with four different fires they allegedly set on public lands near their Harney County, Oregon, ranch in 2001 and 2006.

The Verdict: Each was found guilty of one count of using fire to damage property of the United States, related to the 2001 fire, and Steven Hammond was also found guilty of the same charge relating to one of the 2006 fires. The government dismissed two of the counts as part of a deal with the defendants, and the two were found not guilty on all other charges.

The Punishment: They were originally sentenced to three months (Dwight) and 12 months (Steven) and, in a separate deal, fined $400,000. But the jail sentences were far less than the minimum required by the statute under which they were prosecuted. So federal attorneys appealed the sentencing. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals sent them back for re-sentencing last October, where each got five year sentences (with credit for time served). They reported to federal prison Jan. 4, 2016.

Dwight Hammond speaks to reporters outside his home in Burns, Oregon, days before he turned himself into Terminal Island prison in California.

Brooke Warren/High Country News

Cliven Bundy

The Crime: The southern Nevada rancher has defiantly refused to pay federal grazing fees since at least 1993, and continued to put his cattle on land that had been permanently closed to grazing. In 2014, the situation came to a head when heavily armed, self-described patriots converged on the Bundy Ranch to fend off BLM officers who had come to confiscate Bundy’s cattle.

The Verdict: First the BLM and then no fewer than three federal judges found that Bundy was trespassing and ordered him to remove his cows. They also determined that he owes anywhere from $300,000 to $1 million in back grazing fees.

The Punishment: After Bundy’s continual refusal to remove his cows or pay the money owed, BLM contractors showed up to confiscate his cattle, as they had done with the Danns. But a heavily armed group of supporters converged on the ranch, threatening the federal officers at gunpoint. The BLM backed down, returned the cattle and left. Bundy — and those “defending” him — have yet to be prosecuted. The cattle yet roam free.

Cliven Bundy speaks at a forum hosted by the American Academy for Constitutional Education.

]]>No publisherSagebrush RebellionPublic LandsBureau of Land ManagementJusticeU.S. Fish & WildlifeDepartment of InteriorRanchingAgriculture2016/01/06 13:55:00 GMT-6ArticleFormer BLM chief: Bundys ‘pursuing an agenda’ on public landhttps://www.hcn.org/articles/bureau-of-land-management-outgunned-bundy-malheur-blm-sheriff/interview-former-blm-head-bob-abbey
Bob Abbey was Bureau of Land Management chief from 2009 to 2012 and Nevada state director from 1997 to 2005. In a recent interview with High Country News, he discusses the BLM’s response to ranchers, including Cliven Bundy in Nevada, who broke federal laws, as well as the importance of collaborating with local law enforcement when it comes to confrontation. The Bundy standoff in 2014 in Nevada is repeatedly cited by self-described militiamen and other ranchers with similar anti-federal views as a galvanizing moment for their cause. (Text was edited for length and clarity.)

High Country News: What did you learn about the Bundys during your interactions with them while you were at BLM?

Bob Abbey: I met with Cliven a couple times… about my desire for him to remove his livestock (which he was illegally grazing on public lands in Southern Nevada)… At the end of the day he refused to do so… He was adamant in his belief there is no role for the U.S. government to manage public lands. He articulated that to me. His actions are driven by that belief.… At the end of the day, most people have a common respect for the law… Mr. Bundy, he just believes differently; that he’s above the law. The fact that their trespass hasn’t been dealt with in a timely matter reinforced those beliefs.

People like Cliven Bundy and sons are using the ruse of public land grazing as an excuse for pursuing an agenda, which is anti-federal government, and has very little to do with grazing on public lands… One thing that offends me is the fact that they continue to say they are supporting ranchers that have permits. My experience is that over 90 percent of ranchers I’ve worked with in the past are good stewards that fully comply and have cooperative relationship with land managers.

HCN: What’s the connection between the 2014 standoff and the occupation of the wildlife refuge in Oregon?

Abbey: I think the delay in bringing them [Cliven Bundy] to justice has empowered other extremists to pursue radical tactics and I think that’s what we’re seeing in Oregon. If someone doesn’t think there will be any repercussions for breaking the law, they will continue to act. There have to be repercussions… I believe there will be. There are better mechanisms for pursing disagreements than picking up arms and occupying federal facilities and threatening people’s lives.

HCN: How did you deal with Bundy’s illegal grazing when you were the BLM’s state director in Nevada from 1997 to 2005?

Abbey: My own experience with Mr. Bundy was to seek voluntary compliance because of the potential threat for violence, which he had advocated. We were not able to get him to voluntarily remove his livestock… It was a constant, ongoing… It should have been dealt with many, many years ago.

The potential for violence was there. By ignoring it, it could have led to a sense of empowerment and more open opposition to federal laws and that’s what we’re seeing today.

Could it and should it have been handled differently? Yes.

(The failure of government to crack down) emboldened Mr. Bundy’s sons and others.

HCN: What prevented government from stopping the Bundys’ illegal grazing?

Abbey: You have to have consensus. There’s not a lot of appetite on the part of senior leadership for putting people in jeopardy that could result in a loss of life on their watch. There were legitimate concerns about violence. Someone could get hurt or killed.

HCN: Why didn’t you impound Bundy’s cattle when you were state director?

Abbey: When I was Nevada state director there were a number of trespasses we took action against. His situation was not the highest priority … (other ranchers were illegally grazing livestock in areas that had) higher resource value and less of a chance for a violence against employees.

Impoundment requires a number of people to round up the livestock. You have to deal with livestock while they’re in you possession… and pay high prices for wranglers and helicopters. It’s a costly operation. That’s why last resort.

HCN: How did Bundy differ from other ranchers who illegally grazed livestock?

Abbey: Mr. Bundy has been more vocal with rhetoric. Based on our own analysis, we felt there was a high degree he would act upon those threats…

Where there’s going to be a confrontation, where people are armed, you mitigate for situations where there’s a high degree of risk. But just because someone makes threats doesn’t take away the need to comply with the law.

HCN: What did you do about Bundy’s illegal grazing when you became BLM chief in 2009?

Abbey: At that point in time the situation with Mr. Bundy was managed by the BLM office in Nevada. In late 2011, early 2012, there was a plan developed to take action against Mr. Bundy and remove his livestock… (Abbey was involved in planning it.)

(The local sheriff had concerns that the court order from the 1990s would be perceived as out of date, so they went back to Clark County court to get a new order, which they got in late 2012 about the time Abbey left the BLM.)

It directed the Bureau of Land Management to take the actions necessary to end the trespass.

HCN: Why didn’t something happen then, in late 2012 or early 2013?

Abbey: You had presidential election, changes in senior personnel, an acting director before Neil Kornze was appointed (director). Everybody had to be briefed and comfortable with the proposed plan.

HCN: Why did the 2014 effort to seize Bundy’s cattle fail?

Abbey: That impoundment led to total chaos that could have been avoided if different tactics had been employed.

It’s a matter of working with the local law enforcement agencies and trying to use the court order as the action to obtain voluntary compliance from Mr. Bundy to remove livestock. If that was not going to occur, (BLM should have) worked with the sheriff to enforce the court order, and if (Bundy) refused to comply he would have been arrested…I’m not sure bringing in a large number of (federal) law enforcement was the right approach… I do know that Mr Bundy had always indicated that he respected the authority the sheriff… (in hindsight, a better approach would have been to) allow the sheriff to take the lead.

Elizabeth Shogren is HCN's Washington, DC, correspondent.

]]>No publisherPublic LandsBureau of Land ManagementPoliticsAgricultureRanchingSagebrush RebellionJusticeInterviewDepartment of InteriorNot on homepage2016/01/07 16:55:00 GMT-6ArticleThe first Sagebrush Rebellion: what sparked it and how it endedhttps://www.hcn.org/articles/a-look-back-at-the-first-sagebrush-rebellion
Today’s movement is a radical, perverted version of the 1970s-80s rebellion.“(The) Sagebrush (Rebellion) comes into relief as what it really is — a murky fusion of idealism and greed that may not be heroic, nor righteous, nor even intelligent. Only one certainty exists — that Sagebrush is a revolt against federal authority, and that its taproot grows deep in the century’s history. Beyond this, it is incoherent. Part hypocrisy, part demagoguery, partly the honest anger of honest people, it is a movement of confusion and hysteria and terrifyingly destructive potential. What it is no one fully understands. What it will do no one can tell.”

While that sounds like an observation from 2016, perhaps nodding toward the armed occupation of a wildlife refuge in Oregon by the radical fringe of the latest incarnation of the Sagebrush Rebellion, this passage was actually written in 1982 by then-Colorado Governor Richard Lamm.

He referred to the first of three distinct Sagebrush Rebellions of modern times*: The first flared up in the mid- to late-1970s; the second occurred in the mid-1990s; and the third began not long after President Obama was elected in 2008. Though the first rebellion had ebbed by the early 1980s, and accomplished none of its big national legislative goals, it did leave a lasting imprint on the West. Here are the big takeaways of that first wave:

What sparked it: Many miners, loggers and ranchers of the West were rebelling against “federal colonialism” that came in the form of environmental laws, from the Wilderness Act to the Endangered Species Act to, especially, the Federal Land Policy Management Act. Passed in 1976, FLPMA shifted the Bureau of Land Management’s mandate from one of maximizing extraction from public lands, to preserving — at least to a limited extent — those same lands. To critics, it locked in the “absentee landlord” relationship Washington had with much of the West.

To the rebels, President Jimmy Carter was an especially onerous landlord. On the one hand he tried to cut off funding to a slate of federal water projects pending throughout the West (thus depriving the region of its lifeblood), and on the other wanted to turn large portions of the region into an MX missile launching pad (cutting off other access to that land and making us a target for the Soviet Union). While Lamm wouldn’t exactly count himself as a Sagebrush Rebel, he also revolted against the federal landlord when Carter and Congress implemented an $88 billion synfuels subsidy program that led to water-guzzling, destructive oil shale development in the Interior West.

Who were the rebels: The movement had many layers, from local politicians and entire boards of county commissioners, to state legislators and even U.S. congressmen. The leaders included San Juan County, Utah, Commissioner and uranium miner Cal Black — the model for Edward Abbey’s antagonist Bishop Love in his novel, “The Monkey Wrench Gang” — Nevada state legislator Dean Rhoads, U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch, from Utah, and a handful of other politicians, mostly from Nevada and Idaho.

Hatch, Black and Sens. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., and Ted Stevens, R-Ak., headed up the League for the Advancement of States Equal Rights, or LASER, the biggest and most influential rebel organization. The Idaho-based Sagebrush Rebellion, Inc., also touted a large membership. Funding for these groups came mostly from the extractive industry; the Rebellion was hardly a pure grassroots movement. The closest analogues in today’s movement would probably be the corporate-sponsored, right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council and the American Lands Council.

What did they want: Quite simply, they wanted more local control over the land that surrounded them, therefore gaining more control over their own destiny. Some wanted to transfer federal lands to the state, others were okay with the land remaining under the federal umbrella, as long as they got more say in how the feds managed the land. In most cases, this would mean fewer regulations.

Ronald Reagan supported the Sagebrush Rebels' cause, and they supported him. This appeared in High Country News in 1980.

High Country News

What actions did the rebels take on the ground: They sure as heck didn’t show up, armed to the teeth, and take over a federal facility, or face down federal officials with assault rifles. But there was violence, or at least threats thereof. In 1979, Black told BLM officials that he was to the point “where I’ll blow up bridges, ruins and vehicles. We’re going to start a revolution.” Black never delivered on his promises, but there was widespread vandalism of ancient Puebloan sites in Utah that appeared to be politically motivated. And in 1980, the Grand County, Utah, commissioners led a group of hundreds of locals in bulldozing a road into a Wilderness Study Area in protest of what they saw as a BLM land grab. No one was prosecuted.

On a political level: The first Sagebrush Rebellion was mostly waged in state legislatures, where a number of bills were considered in Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Alaska, Oregon and Arizona, demanding the transfer of federal lands to the states. (Those early bills were mirrored in 2012 and 2013 in Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada, Montana and Utah). Hatch also introduced a bill in the Senate that would have allowed state land commissions to take over some 600 million acres of public lands nationwide. Meanwhile, LASER actively courted 1980 presidential candidate Ronald Reagan, who declared himself a rebel.

What happened: Reagan’s election, and the appointment of property-rights advocate James Watt as Secretary of Interior, defused the rebellion. Watt didn’t go for wholesale federal land transfers to the states, but he and his cohorts rolled back regulations and pledged to incorporate more local say into federal land management. There was suddenly far less to rebel against, at least for the extractive industries and their allies.

Meanwhile, consensus among what was left of the Rebellion fell apart. Even many of the Rebellion's leaders understood that state-level land transfer bills were symbolic and had no real legal basis, so they'd get shot down by the courts thanks to the property and supremacy clauses of the U.S. Constitution, as well as the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Light v. United States. A congressional bill like Hatch's might make it through the courts if it passed, but the chances of that were slim to none.

Besides, when the costs of such transfers were revealed, they didn't seem so great. A study by the Interior Department found that states could end up losing millions of dollars if they were to similarly manage the land and reap the same revenues from it as the feds did. Also, the Payments in Lieu of Taxes program, or PILT, was just kicking in at that time. Under the program, the feds pay counties in order to make up for property taxes that the counties can’t collect from public lands — that money would be lost if the state took over the land.

Many ranchers and miners had second thoughts about the states taking over federal land, as well. Hardrock miners have nearly unfettered access to federal lands and have to pay no royalties for the minerals they extract. Oil and gas drillers pay low royalties, and ranchers get a prime deal for grazing on BLM lands. They were worried they’d lose those deals under state management — royalties and grazing fees for state lands can be 50 percent higher or more than for federal lands.

As governor, Lamm occasionally sided with the Rebels. But he came to see the Rebellion as a fool's errand. In “The Angry West,” he wrote: “… by asserting, even flaunting, a regional independence that never existed, the proud West becomes the foolish West. Worse, by continuing to act today as though it still has no need for the federal government, even as it continues to profit from federal largesse, it compounds its hypocrisy and undermines its credibility.”

Aftermath: While the regional, state-level Rebellion faded after 1981, it just kept on flaring up at the local level, particularly in parts of Nevada and Utah. Black didn’t stop fighting until his death in 1990, and by then the next iteration — Sagebrush Rebellion Part II — was about to ignite.

*There has long been resentment toward the federal land agencies in the West, which gave rise to rebellions here and there prior to 1970. One of the early major such uprising was in the late 1800s, and mostly played out in Colorado.

]]>No publisherSagebrush RebellionPoliticsBureau of Land ManagementPublic LandsRanchingMining2016/01/14 14:00:00 GMT-6ArticleSieges like the Oregon standoff turn the rural West into a political stagehttps://www.hcn.org/articles/sieges-like-the-Malhuer-Oregon-Bundy-turn-the-rural-west-into-a-political-stage
The armed protesters occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in southeast Oregon have indicated that they will leave if the locals so desire. Well, it's time for them to go: Harney County residents, who just held a huge community meeting about this invasion, seemed to heartily agree that they want the vigilantes to pack their bags and skedaddle.

Sieges like the one happening near Burns exploit Western communities as a stage to perform political theater. The people involved bring violence and hostility to places that in day-to-day life are mostly noted for their tranquility.

Last summer, for example, I visited a new sculpture park in the tiny mountain town of Lincoln, Montana. Locals had invited artists from all over the globe to create art that responds to the scenery of the area's majestic Blackfoot Valley. The result was a dramatic reclaiming of community identity. That identity had been called into question by the decline of logging in the 1980s and '90s, and by the FBI capture of Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski, who was living in a hermit cabin near Lincoln in 1996.

The saying is that any press is good press, but in small towns, locals know this isn't true. Last August in Lincoln, as young children explored the giant works of art at the newly opened Sculpture in the Wild, a group called the "Oath Keepers" showed up in town. They sported camouflage clothing, toted military-style weapons and claimed to "defend" a local miner's claim on public land.

None of the media representatives who covered the Oath Keepers' anti-government protest mentioned the jaw-dropping art just down the road from Lincoln's main drag. This international show of sculptors simply couldn't compete for news coverage with sinister-looking men, bristling with weapons.

Over in my hometown of Salmon, Idaho, the Internet buzzed for two years running about an event – a wolf-hunting derby – that most of us didn't know existed until we saw it on the news. Granted, wolves are controversial in some circles. Still, most people here don't spend that much time thinking about the canine. After 20 years, most of us have gotten used to the predator's presence. But the 2013 and 2014 wolf derbies attracted emotionally charged hotheads from all over the country. The event was staged, in fact, to ignite a tired debate that most Americans have moved beyond.

Salmon is a remote but amazingly beautiful little community. The Salmon River runs through the city, while the Beaverhead, Salmon and Lemhi mountain ranges stand guard. As in many small towns, people here are almost universally respectful, kind folk who take care of their neighbors. The tradition of hunting and fishing is sacred here, and most ranchers treat the lands with respect – even reverence – and are proud of conserving habitat for fish and wildlife even as they provide food and fiber for the world.

But it's difficult to see beauty if you come here looking for ugliness. Christopher Ketcham, reporting for Vice magazine, made this astonishing comment: "The folks in Salmon hate environmentalists. It's a small town, and the people, thin-lipped and narrow-eyed, easily sniff out strangers." Oh, brother.

These are the prejudices and stereotypes that we as rural Westerners too often confront, and it's up to us to change the narrative. The need for deep discussion about public lands is real. Those of us who live in communities surrounded by them know that wildfire, insects and weeds have moved in on lands that once provided a living for us. Our treasured national landscapes and the fish, wildlife and water within those landscapes are taking a big hit, and so are the communities whose fates are intertwined with them.

Crossing into Harney County, where a group of self-described patriots occupied a wildlife refuge.

All across the West, communities have been working hard to find real and lasting solutions to their problems. This patient work rarely grabs headlines in the way that gun-slinging, interloping blowhards do.

The writer William Kittredge, who grew up in southeast Oregon, said of the area, "The northern quarter of the Great Basin, southeastern Oregon and northern Nevada, is a drift of sagebrush country the size of France. The raw landforms incessantly confront us with both geologic time and our own fragility. The rims were built over eons; we can see the layers, lava-flow on lava-flow. Shadows of clouds travel like phantoms across the white playas of the alkaline wet-weather lakes. But the endlessness of desert is not so intimidating if you focus on the beauties at your feet, red and green lichen on the volcanic rocks, tiny flowers."

We who live in these lyrical and remote places have intimate knowledge of their value. We have an important story to tell. We should not let others such as the Bundys tell another story for us.

Gina Knudson is a contributor to Writers on the Range, the opinion service of High Country News. She writes in Idaho.

]]>No publisherWriters on the RangeOregonSagebrush RebellionIdahoMontanaPeople & Places2016/01/09 03:00:00 GMT-6ArticleHow the feds can ensure Western states get more water in 2016https://www.hcn.org/articles/how-the-feds-can-ensure-western-states-get-more-water-in-2016
Key legislation failed in 2015. Will this year be any different? This summer, as California was struggling through its fourth and most severe year of drought, two California Congressmen unveiled legislation meant to ease the pain. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) and Rep. David Valadao (R) introduced, respectively, the California Emergency Drought Relief Act of 2015 and the Western Water and American Food Security Act of 2015. Though both are aimed primarily at their home state, the bills’ scope is West-wide.

Both, for example, seek more federal money for new water storage and infrastructure projects. Both would expedite environmental review of those projects, and maximize water supply for farms and communities. And both “contain provisions that could alter the implementation of the Endangered Species Act and, in some cases, potentially set a precedent for how federal agencies address endangered and threatened species,” according to the Congressional Research Service. Those precedents include limiting federal agencies’ ability to manage stream flows for endangered fish.

Beyond these similarities, the bills take wildly different paths. Feinstein’s (preferred by environmentalists) focuses on water recycling and desalination; Valadeo’s on squeezing more from rivers. Still, as summer stretched into fall with little relief for sun-blasted California, there was hope the two could find common ground. More than 100 farm groups and water authorities signed a letter in October asking Congress to compromise. Environmental groups —despite their opposition to the endangered species implications —agreed something needed to be done.

Yet the year ended without any such progress.

Not only were Feinstein and Valadao’s bills caught up in political bickering, Congress also failed to pass any of the six or so other drought relief bills introduced by Western lawmakers. And Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, chair of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, never introduced the comprehensive drought package she’d hinted at.

Agriculture is one of the primary industries impacted by drought in California.

Creative Common/Flickr user Russ Allison Loar

On January 11, the Senate reconvenes. Despite El Niño’s snow and rain, the drought will march on. Lawmakers in 2016 will be faced with the same challenges they failed to address in 2015: securing water for agriculture and communities. Planning for a drier, more populous future. Protecting water-dependent fish and wildlife. Will they do any better?

Jimmy Hague, director of the Center for Water Resources with the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, is skeptical. If Congress wasn’t able to reach a compromise in 2015, why would 2016 — with the added challenges of an election year — be any different? “It is really difficult to get consensus on water legislation,” Hague says. “All the controversy between those two bills still exists, and now we’ve added a presidential election year on top of it.”

Nonetheless, Hague thinks that Western water woes will get a helping hand from the feds in 2016. That’s because there are at least 20 measures that agencies can implement without Congressional action. Many were detailed in a list of recommendations that the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, Trout Unlimited and The Nature Conservancy submitted to the White House last summer — around the same time that Feinstein and Valadeo were unveiling their bills.

Compared to the controversial congressional legislation, the list didn’t exactly grab headlines. While legislation calls for desalination plants and dam-building, the conservation groups’ ideas include things like allowing the Internal Revenue Service to include “water donations” as a tax write-off, or encouraging the Bureau of Reclamation to fill and draw down reservoirs based on actual conditions rather than set-in-stone calendar dates.

But while Congress’ plans have stalled, these smaller administrative solutions may be gaining traction. Several were implemented in 2015, including an expansion of the Bureau of Reclamation's “WaterSMART” program. Among other things, WaterSMART grants have been used to reduce leakage in aging irrigation canals. That keeps more water in rivers for fish and wildlife. A project on Montana’s Sun River saved 10,000 acre-feet of water annually.

Hague believes that the Obama administration will keep quietly plugging away at similar drought resilience projects in 2016 — stuff that doesn’t get much attention but could have big impacts. And lawmakers, for their part, say they’re committed to doing better. Nine Western senators, both Democrat and Republican, wrote a letter asking Murkowski (who chairs the committee though which all drought bills must pass) to not give up on drought negotiations. Murkowski’s spokesman, Michael Tadeo, wrote to High Country News that the Senator has no plans to do so: drought is among her top priorities for the year.

Yet in a Congress where snowballs are held up to disprove global warming, there are fears that this winter’s rain and snow might derail progress on drought negotiations. “There’s been this pattern,” Hague says. “There’s a drought and people freak out about it and work on solutions, and then it rains and they forget about it. And then the cycle repeats itself.”

]]>No publisherDroughtCaliforniaWaterPoliticsGrowth & SustainabilityCommunitiesBureau of Reclamation2016/01/08 14:55:00 GMT-6ArticleUnite and Conquerhttps://www.hcn.org/issues/47.4
Profile of the former Las Vegas water czar Pat Mulroy, solutions to rampant dust in Owen’s River Valley, community solar comes of age in the West, and more. No publisher2015/03/02 05:05:00 GMT-6Issue